The demand for mobile data and voice communication continues to evidence significant growth. Examples for mobile communication systems include cellular-based wireless communication networks. Such networks include various network nodes. The network nodes may include base stations which respectively provide coverage for a radio cell.
A user equipment of a mobile communication network may be a Proximity Service (ProSe) enabled device. Several ProSe enabled user equipments which are located in proximity to each other are operative to perform device-to-device (D2D) communication. D2D communication allows user equipments of a mobile communication network to directly communicate with each other when the user equipments are located in proximity to each other. D2D communication has a wide variety of applications, including public safety and other use cases. Emergency calls are one example for public safety use cases of D2D communication. For illustration, if a user equipment indicates an emergency call situation, another user equipment may provide repeater function to ensure good network coverage for the user equipment. Direct data or voice communication between user equipments is another example for use cases of D2D communication. For illustration, ProSe enabled user equipments located in proximity to each other may engage in data or voice communication. The respective D2D communication is not transmitted to the radio access network of the mobile communication network.
User equipments may perform D2D communication even when all of the user equipments of a D2D communication group are located outside the coverage of the mobile communication network. The user equipments may use D2D communication resources for the D2D communication. The D2D communication resources may be fixed or may be assigned persistently or semi-persistently by a node of the mobile communication network before the user equipments leave the mobile communication network, for example.
When one or several of the user equipments of the D2D communication group move from out of coverage into a coverage area of a radio communication unit, e.g. of a base station of the mobile communication network, interference problems may arise. The D2D communication resources allocated to the user equipments of the D2D communication group may overlap, in the time and/or frequency domain, with resources used by the radio communication unit for receiving or transmitting radio signals. In order to mitigate such problems, various measures may be taken. For illustration, new D2D communication resources may be allocated for the user equipments of the D2D communication group which are less likely to cause interference. Until the resource allocation takes effect, there may still be interference problems.